Scott Siegel seems never at a loss for intriguing ideas for his annual dozen productions at New York’s Town Hall. His creations include Broadway by the Year, the Summer Broadway Festival, Unplugged, the Nightlife Awards, and each autumn’s Broadway Cabaret Festival. The astonishing aspect is that each production is unique – a single night’s event, usually polished to a high gloss.

This year’s Broadway Cabaret Festival three-nighter began with a hard-to-beat collection of songs and songsters. A Tribute to Lerner & Loewe drew upon some of the most treasured American musicals: Brigadoon, Camelot, Gigi, Paint Your Wagon and others, including perhaps the most treasured of them all, My Fair Lady.

Siegel’s usual sorcery was in evidence, pulling together oft-disparate elements with entertaining and whimsical narratives of the tunes, the tunesmiths, the times and a generous handful of amusing anecdotes. But most adroitly, he filled his stage with talented and appealing singers and dancers with track records covering most of the major Broadway shows.

Memorable tunes started with the opener, an entertaining “Almost Like Being in Love” sung by Julia Murney, Sarah Jane McMahon and Erin Denman, who made her theatrical reputation as Erin Crouch until her recent marriage to the show’s director and choreographer, Jeffry Denman. Standout numbers were plentiful. Sometime Matinee Idol Robert Cuccioli, who would delight the audience again later with “She Wasn’t You” from Alan J. Lerner’s and Burton Lane’s On a Clear Day, followed with “C’est Moi” from Camelot. Immediately thereafter, Sarah Jane McMahon, crackling with the fury of a frustrated female, left the audience breathless with her “Show Me”.

The program had talent in abundance and the excitement built steadily, culminating in an exhilarating second act. After sharing one ovation with Ron Bohmer, Jeffry Denman and Kevin Worley as part of the foursome’s “They Call the Wind Mariah,” Bistro Award winner Douglas Ladnier mesmerized his audience with his rich voice and an un-mic’d “If Ever I Would Leave You,”

Royal Wedding was a film with Alan J. Lerner’s score and Burton Lane again in the lyricist’s spot. It was the source of two of the night’s highlights. "Sunday Jumps," with Jim Caruso, Kevin Worley and Jeffry Denman, was a dance sequence as zany as anything ever crafted by Harold Lloyd. Then Jeffry with his newly wedded bride, Erin, in a scintillating song and dance version of the Fred Astaire/Jane Powell number, “How Could You Believe Me?” (“…when I said I loved you, when you know I've been a liar all my life?) left the audience cheering.

With enthusiasm in the Hall running high, Marni Nixon, the singing voice-behind-the-camera for such film stars as Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn came to the stage. Almost forty-five years after dubbing Eliza’s songs for Hepburn in My Fair Lady, and flamboyantly dressed to the nines for her enthralled Town Hall audience, Nixon recreated “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” She earned the biggest ovation of the night.

Ross Patterson was musical director, pianist and arranger for the program, with the added contributions of the Ross Patterson Little Big Band. And Scott Siegel was, once again, the nonpareil producer, writer and host.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
October 17, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org